Landscape Photography High Resolution
Nisha Heidinger
I have heard countless times that "resolution is of utmost importance for landscape photography". This also comes up often when landscape photographers look to medium format for it's detail and resolution. Here is a quote from a dpreview Landscape Primer:
As you can see I can't decide myself why this "rule" of landscape photography is so prevalent. What makes an image of a waterfall "require" higher resolution than an image of a wedding ceremony or football player in action(per se)?
Well, the statement that "resolution is of utmost importance for landscape photography" is questionable in itself. As far as I'm concerned, the highest priority in photography is taking a great photo, so composition and timing are of the utmost importance.
Landscapes capture detail that stretches far off into the distance, as well as detail that is closer. The more resolution, the more detail a close viewer can see on the horizon if they look closely enough.
However, the statement might appear to imply that resolution is only important for landscape photography, or that other forms of photography don't require as much resolution. This is wrong. Other types of photography can benefit from high resolution, too. For example, high resolution portraiture captures better texture and detail in clothes and hair.
Low resolution doesn't cause distortion, it causes lack of detail. Lack of detail will mean that distant objects on the horizon will be less distinct, or that very small objects or fine texture will be less distinct, along with the edges of objects.
I am wondering if this might be a somewhat dated stance, considering what type of detail and resolution can be captured with basically any current DSLR. Maybe this theory comes from 35mm film days and no longer applies
It's certainly true that sensor resolution of new DSLRs has reached a point where you don't need to worry about it more than other things. 12 megapixels is pretty low end these days, and yet it is more than enough for a pretty high resolution image. There's also the resolution of the lens and of the output medium to worry about, though. It's no good having a 36 megapixel sensor if your lens won't resolve that kind of resolution or you print it using a 150 dpi process. So, sensor resolution is only one part of makes up the achievable final resolution of a photo, and you are correct that in some cases it's not the main limiting factor. It would be wrong to assume however, that it doesn't matter at all.
You admire a view that really impresses. To convey the same view to other people you take a photograph. Low resolution gives the viewer an impression of impressive view, but high resolution (and large print) really impresses the viewer. No, of course it is not the resolution that impresses, but the feeling that you are not looking at a photograph, but actually seeing the view yourself.
High resolution never hurts and lots of detail is okay, it is just that you might be perfectly happy with a photograph of your car standing on the driveway without being able to read the maker of the windshield wiperblades. If you can read it, that's fine, but the subject of the photo is the car, not the wiperblades. So you don't really miss anything if you see the small logo or not. In a landscape photograph the subject is the landscape and everything counts as interesting. You want to see it all.
Time. Landscape images and especially landscape prints are often looked at for much longer than other types of photographs. Yet, the longer we can stare the more we will notice the little defects and blemishes; the more we become tempted to step closer. Have you ever notices how visitors in art galleries look at a Flemish landscape first from afar and then step closer?
I have a 160cm x 240cm landscape picture in my living room and hours of sitting in the room have made me aware of numerous little things in it, like a blurred branch of a tree. Had I only looked at the image for a short time, I wouldn't have noticed.
Beauty. Images 'work' for the audience often for two reasons: Because they tell a story or because they are aesthetically pleasing, beautiful. An image that captures us because we react to its aesthetics needs perfect craftmanship.
Look at it from the other side: Photojournalism from a war zone would often fail all the basic technical criteria for good images and yet they tell a story and so it doesn't matter. (Amazingly, some photographers get really interesting lighting even under these adverse conditions. And that happens often!)
Browse our gallery of stunning landscape and scenery photography! Here you'll find pictures of mountains, waterfalls, trees, sunrises & sunsets in all seasons. Free to download and use in your next commercial project!
As you may recall from the beginning of this article, I rarely implement this technique. Instead, I save it for specific situations where I want to be able to make large prints. Or, as with the feature image, I would like to emulate a wide-angle lens with something narrower. I suggest practicing in situations locally to make sure you have a strong sense of what your lens can and cannot do.
Madison is a mathematician turned statistician based out of Columbus, OH. He fell back in love with film years ago while living in Charleston, SC and hasn't looked back since. In early 2019 he started a website about film photography.
I did something like this - once. Took my 70-200, took 30 (ish?) photos and stitched them all together.
You know how long it took me to fix all the stitching and parallax errors? 2 days.
You know how long it took me to load all those 30-ought files into photoshop and manage to process it all? Several hours. And my PC was no slouch, with a top-end CPU, GPU and plenty of RAM to spare.
Well, first, I had to downsize it as it was too large for my phone to be able to load and show people.
Then I figured, hey, I got this huge MP count photo (46,409x9774), why not make a print out of it out on something cool like glass and have it cover my living room wall?
Yeah, that's when logistics stopped me. Not only was it neigh impossible to find someone who can print a photo that large (I think over 3 meters without reducing DPI), I physically had no way of transporting something so big as it was too big for the printing place to ship it.
True, but, I can also use the cost of a Pano head to get a higher resolution camera to begin with.
I'm not against super resolution photos, but the expensive equipment you'll need just isn't worth it for the limited use of the result
The other part of the equation is having a powerful enough system to handle larger file sizes. My 2 systems both use 2 fast NAS storage systems combined with a MacPro (Trashcan) or Mid 2019 MacBook Pro.
Another essential tool is a large enough 4K monitor (Eizo 32") as an example) to spot flaws such as misalignment with combined images. Usually things architecturally related always pose some issues. I have found that detecting perfectly level images is very difficult on my 15 inch MacBook Pro.
I've done both this technique and the one where you take a bunch of photos of the same scene and enlarge and stack the images together for a higher-res picture than the originals. Same idea as the pixel-shift technology, but the shifting being done via your hand rather than at the sensor level. Works pretty well for static landscape shots.
With over 200 stitched panoramas under my belt, I have the following comments:
1. The resolution of the image depends on the focal length of the lens. Want more detail? Use a longer lens.
2. The best gear for panos isn't full frame. You run into stability and depth of field issues. I prefer a micro four-thirds camera with a 45-150mm lens, usually at 100-150mm.
3. The longer the lens, the less distortion and the easier the stitching will go.
4. With any kind of subject movement, you'll have weird half-people, etc. Shoot extra frames to give yourself more to work with. Fix the problems on the individual images before you stitch.
5. You're shooting with a tele, and you'll have depth of field problems. Focus stacking comes to the rescue. Yes, it multiplies your number of shots and you'll have to stack dozens of images. Get used to it.
6. Gigapan Stitch software (and HugIn) are superior to Photoshop for this kind of work. Both do a smoother job and take less processing power.
7. At a certain point you realize that this kind of ultra-sharpness is only worth it for subjects with lots of detail. Foggy mornings are not made for stitched panoramas.
-are-enormous-explorable-panoramas/
I did this for over 2 years because i could not afford a good Wide Angle lens.
This christmas i finaly bought one.
And as a hobbyist I would never ever make "panoramas" if i don'T have to.
Even if i stil have only a 16 MPix fuji X-T1 camera, all the work on the PC and possible problems are not worth it for me.
The only time i do Panorama is milkyway and that sometimes is a huuuuge pain to rework (vertical panoramas with seperat exposures are the worst)...
The less i sit at the PC to rework the more i go out to photograph.
The very affordable Photoshop alternative Affinity Photo (one time license fee) has an impressive stitching tool. How it is able to intuitively handle a series of photos that have alignment issues will amaze you. Highly recommended.
I've started using this technique to take advantage of the compression and shallow DOF using a longer lens when photographing a subject (a model, or in this case a motorcycle) while still capturing the surroundings. This image is 11 vertical images horizontally stitched in Lightroom. The images were shot with a 70-200mm f2.8 lens @200mm, and this would not have been possible with a wider lens and just cropping it down.
Why all the focus on using Photoshop for this? There are many specialized programs that really simplifies and speeds up the work! I do it regularly - usually on a more modest number of images! My recommendation is try the very capable ICE from Microsoft - it handles an 'unlimited' number of photos and does Gigapixel panorama or matrix images. It is FREE and very good! Disadvantage? It is more or less fully automatic ...
You can always polish up the result in Photoshop afterwards if you want or need to!
Also Affinity Photo is quite good!
Just try ICE! Don't skip it just because it's FREE! :-)